The Burdens of Fraternity
by EagerTurtle
Summary: Trunks would always remember the day he became a brother. It was a day no one could remember quite like he did. That day, Trunks saws something in his father he never thought he'd see. (A short, one shot AU. Trunks is only three when she's born.)


**AN: In my stories, I tend to decrease the age difference between Trunks and Bra. In this, they're three to four years apart rather than say... ten or fifteen. I find it fun to explore a different dynamic between them, and I hope you guys enjoy it too!**

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><p>Trunks would always remember the day he became a brother. It was a day no one could remember quite like he did. For everyone else, it was about how quickly Goten or Marron had taken to the infant and how they'd cooed at her makeshift crib. Some might recount how much pain his mother had been in or how many bottles Bra had managed to chug in only an hour. But Trunks would always remember his father and what he had said that night.<p>

Trunks had slept at his mother's side in the hospital almost every night. His grandparents, while loved dearly, could not subdue the general nervousness that had overcome him when Bulma left early that Sunday morning. He found himself missing her warmth, her sent, her soft voice. On top of that, he had always been a light sleeper. The night he'd spent in the hospital were restless ones.

The room was always too cold and reeked of chemicals. The nurses that roamed the halls tickled his senses and flared his already prominent anxiety. It wasn't until he sensed his father that he decided he'd had enough of the place.

Trunks sat up and opened his eyes and found Vegeta standing close to an open window, presumably the one he'd flown in from. He held Bra at arm's length, turning her over in his hands and inspecting her as he often did with Trunks when he was a bit younger. His father wore a look of dire concentration, one that was almost confused by the sleepy infant glowering back at him.

Trunks wondered what it was his father saw in those eyes. Did Vegeta see himself in that bitter frown like everyone else did?

Trunks crept over to his father and attached himself to his leg. He used it as leverage, his hand reaching up as high as it could until it hooked onto the man's arm and tugged. He was shaken off easily enough, batted away from him and the new baby.

"Are you going to drop her out the window?" Trunk's asked, once again noticing the open window and cool breeze that fluttered in from it. "I'm just asking because then she'd be squished and we'd have to scrape her off the road."

His father's brow creased, a... look absorbing his usually apathetic features. "Have I ever thrown you out a window?"

Trunks considered the question for a moment, then looked up again. "No?"

So then... he didn't want Bra to be squished? Or him?

"Not yet." his father corrected, after a sullen moment.

"Oh..."

He watched his father close the window and lock it tight, the baby cradled in his other arm. "You'll learn how to fly tomorrow and there will be no more talk of throwing children out of windows. It's pathetic that you don't know how to control your energy already."

"Will the Bra learn how to fly, too?"

"Go to bed, boy."

That day, Trunks had marveled at his new found title – "brother". Maybe not in the way anyone had expected him to. Looking back, Trunks could honestly say that it was never about protecting her, expressing his unconditional love for her or even sharing his toys. He never did any of those things and he'd never planned to.

That didn't make him a bad brother.

Because in an instant, the very second she was born... he understood her.

No one else in the world could say that, for either of them. They weren't just their parent's mistake, they were their parents _mistakes_. Twice. They were the cause for their mother's tied tubes and the reason their father was grounded to earth. For Trunks, he was part of the reason he'd left Earth the first time. And for Bra, the reason he stayed.

They shared the same royal blood and the deed to their mother's legacy. They were one and the same, gloriously bred and trapped in the shadows of their parents.

At three years old, he had no way of knowing any of that, but he would soon come to learn it, as she would, and accept it. They were isolated by their circumstance, on an island with only each other.

His father has always said that the drive to relate was a human condition. Saiyans were an artless species; they took and never made. Trunks was more human than he was Saiyan. He was sure of it. With his hands, he molded his sorrow into misshapen clay pots and illustrated his emptiness with strokes of a dampened brush. He didn't care if the only person who could hear him was his sister - it still meant he wasn't alone - and he knew she felt the same.

He was her brother.

That day, he didn't become her "big brother" or her "doting brother" or even her "beloved brother", but very simply her "brother".


End file.
